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Month: October 2017

This has nothing to do with this post, but it was the closest history book in reach.

(Rambling ahead, I blame lack of sleep and political overload)

So this wrong side of history phrase. We’re hearing it a lot lately, along with variations like, history will not look kindly….

The thing is, we don’t know how history will see this phase of American history, because we don’t know how it’s going to turn out. I know how I want it to turn out, but I’m not at all sure if I’m sorry or glad that I’ll likely be dead before those books are out. When I was in elementary school, I learned how happy the “Indians” were to help and be helped by the pilgrims. And of course, Columbus discovered America. That definitely improved by the time my kids were in elementary school, and hey, it only took 400 years. Progress is slow. You know what isn’t slow? Destruction and erasure. Recently I saw a tweet referring to this children’s history book, published in 2007, which describes the Trail of Tears (which my kids learned about in third grade) as “Moving Out”–because the First Nations peoples really wanted to make room for the new (white) settlers. For the record, this was definitely not the first time this type of rewrite in a history book has come across my screen. Putting whitewashing to the side, it will always depend on who’s doing the writing, who’s doing the reading, who’s doing the funding, and whether the readers, writers, and funders are from the side that won or lost.

I keep harping on the following point because I think it’s still being glossed over. Millions of Americans wanted this monstrosity leading (if you can call this leading) the country, and the bulk of those millions still do.

Do you like Cheetos? Not as good as dill pickle flavored chips, but still, who can resist artificial, practically glow in the dark salty cheese dust held together by edible styrofoam. I love them. I don’t buy them frequently because it’s easy to overindulge, and they’re a waste of both money and calories. My apartment isn’t a junk-food free zone, but I do try to keep it all balanced. I don’t want to wake up sick every day, feeling my organs waste away while I get fatter, and that definitely isn’t what I want for my children. A lot of people agree with me. Michelle Obama even got a Healthy School Lunch Program going nationwide. But many disagree, and a few months ago, this administration began a rollback of this policy, often using the straw man of kidsarehungryonthisprogrambecausetheyneedemptycaloriesandexcesssodium. Now why would that be?

Perhaps because good nutrition is necessary not just for growth and general health, but for brains. No one–least of all children–can think and learn effectively if they’re malnourished, regardless of what they weigh. If it’s a generation, or multiple generations, of malnourished minds that have also been told higher education and intellectualism are elitist (apparently a slur almost as bad as feminist) writing those yet to be written history books, I wonder what they’ll say. I also wonder why my mind keeps jumping back to the Reagan administration’s efforts to cut the budget for school lunches by classifying condiments as vegetables. I might even be wondering how many of those who voted for 45 were raised thinking a couple of tablespoons of ketchup was nutritionally equivalent to a cup of steamed broccoli.

Of course this is just one aspect of many. The vast majority are of what I’m calling aspects are symptoms. There is a disease in this country, and it’s both progressing and metastasizing. What else can it be, when millions of people in a democratic country vote for someone who is a demagogue; who is against freedom of the press, believes nepotism is the way to run a government, thinks white supremacists are good people, isn’t remotely concerned about our electoral process being hijacked by a hostile government (at best), freedom of speech, doesn’t care how many lose access to health care or whether or not citizens lead long and healthy lives, lies repeatedly without remorse or concern for proof and facts, bragged about sexual assault, brags about tax dodging and bankruptcies, threatens to jail competitors, threatens war like it’s a game of checkers and he can’t wait to howl “double king me!” is working hard to strip women’s rights, remove needed immigrants–both documented and not–has no interest in a separation between church and state or freedom of religion, antagonizes allies, can’t seem to form or follow a complex thought or policy, and appointed/surrounded himself with people dedicated to destroying the departments they were put in charge of and people dedicated to destroying our democratic nation itself?

Acknowledging and treating symptoms is important, but if you can’t identify and treat the underlying disease, it’s a game of whack-a-mole. If you don’t live in the world of medical mayhem, you might be surprised to know just how many diseases, known and unknown, have no cure. So just what is this disease? Well, my grandmother used to say you can’t fix stupid. We can call it Owen. Or Momma, a kernel of truth packaged in a disheveled bow of mean and bullshit.

Maybe we don’t have to worry what the US history books will say, because there won’t be anyone who can read or write them. And the rest of the world? I’m guessing they won’t be whitewashing our trail of tears in the early twenty-first century, as our administration works to destroy both the planet and any culture that doesn’t want to play checkers or draw their bath.

(because) The moon is always female (also the title of an excellent book of poetry by Marge Piercy)

The title of this post was my standard answer when I was pregnant with Art Child and people would inevitably ask, “Again?! How many babies are you going to have?”

It was none of anybody’s business how many children Husband and I chose to have. You know what else is nobody’s business? How many babies a woman chooses not to have, or why she and her partner, or she alone makes that choice.

Women have never been equal in this country (note that the ERA was never actually passed, though it was first introduced in Congress in 1923). We’ve been closer and further, but never equal. Now, after years of steady progress, we’re about to be manacled to the nursery as we haven’t been since the 1970s. This week the House passed a ban on abortions at/after 20 weeks. Will it pass in the Senate? Who knows? I’ll tell you what I do know, no woman chooses to have an abortion for the hell of it at any point in a pregnancy, and certainly not after growing a baby for 20 weeks. The vast majority of abortions performed beyond that point are done because of fatal fetal defects. Fatal. Not learning disabilities, not a fixable heart defect, or the “wrong” sex, or blue eyes instead of brown, not because a woman decided it was an inconvenient time after all. Included in this bill is the criminalization of doctors who choose to perform late term abortions.

Today I saw this gem. The White House is set to repeal the federal requirement that employers cover birth control (without copays) in their offered health insurance plans. In order to keep this post under a gazillion words, I won’t even start on the fact that easier, affordable access to birth control has contributed to abortion rates being lower than at any point since the passage of Roe v Wade.

Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with being pro-life, this is about being anti-women. This is about further blurring the separation between church and state. This is about control, misogyny, and living under an administration that condones violence against women. If it was about pro-life, we wouldn’t have a White House and a GOP doing everything possible (which is a lot) to take away health care from women and children. They already let CHIP lapse, which means 9 million children are about to lose health insurance. They’re doing everything possible to reduce with an eye towards eliminating Medicaid, which is the gov’t sponsored health insurance that covers the very poorest children and the disabled. Also today, reporting that 45 and the White House have given directives to do everything possible to have the ACA fail. This isn’t a political strategy, this is an inhumane, callous and calculated attack on the most vulnerable members of our society, to go along with the attack on women. If any of these pompous, hypocritical blowhards in the White House and GOP cared about life they’d care about tending to the lives of those who are here and suffering now.

It may take a village, but that isn’t what most of us have. This isn’t going to end. It won’t stop until women have no access to birth control or safe and legal abortions, because Big Daddy’s gonna take care of us. He’s gonna take care of us right into our mass graves.

What? You aren’t a member of the White House or GOP but feel so strongly against abortion that it shouldn’t be legal? Congratulations on the adoption of your 15th unwanted and/or medically needy child. Congratulations too, on raising your sons not to objectify women, not to ever have sex (married or not) if they don’t want a child, not to keep knocking up their wimmenz until their brains and their uteruses leak, not to rape, letting them know the responsibility of rape is on the rapist, always, never the victim, and of course, that they need to do a full 50% of the diaper changing, child rearing, school meetings and function attending, doctor visits, and of course, the laundry. What? You haven’t seen fit to adopt as many children as you can stuff into your home, whether you can afford them or not, whether you’ve got the time to give each one of those children the attention they need, and are just fine with their health insurance being stripped away, and without raising them with the weight of being told how lucky they are that you rescued them like a wormy, emaciated puppy found in the parking lot? You haven’t explained to your sons that what she was wearing doesn’t matter? Did you explain to those oh-so-wanted-and-valued children that it was ok to vote for a man who thinks it’s his right to grab women by the pussy because he’s rich? No? You didn’t/don’t do all of these things? Then maybe, just maybe, you should live your life the way you see fit without stripping away anyone else’s rights, and everyone else can do the same.

First of all, I’ve been trying to write this post for days. My best writing and blogging time is early morning (hence the excess of sunrise photos as you search the archives), but before I write I skim the news, Twitter, and my Facebook feed–and every damned morning I’ve felt as if a broad and hairy fist popped through my keyboard to smash me in the face. In non-simile land, aka real life, I’ve been punched in the face. If you haven’t, let me assure you that it hurts. A lot. Immediately. And then the pain blooms and envelops your brain so that you’re stunned and can’t form a sensible thought; only fight or flight. So basically, every morning I sit down ready to use my words to fight through the madness that is America today, only to find my head rocking back as I close the laptop in metaphorical flight.

I’ve been accused of many things, failure of imagination isn’t one of them. Yet here I sit looking at the little section of apartment that used to hold my kitchen table, unable to imagine what comes next, much the way I was unable to imagine that a glass table can explode without any heat, weight, crack or trigger to cause it. Had I imagined it was possible, I would have researched and discovered this is something that sometimes happens, and wouldn’t have purchased a glass dining table.

I understand what’s happening. People full of anger and frustration, maybe even boredom, decided life wasn’t as good for them as it could be–for some not as good as it should be–and in that anger, frustration, and boredom decided to fuck up everyone’s life. To be fair, much as I knew this would be bad, we all (right and left) thought our system of checks and balances was stronger than it’s turned out to be; riddled with loopholes and gentleman’s agreements based on the premise that those voted into office would indeed be gentlemen/women. I’m not talking about the millionaires/billionaires who support 45; those people will be fine. They were fine regardless of who was at the helm, and they’ll be fine next week, too. But the rest. The poor, the working class, the middle class.

The GOP that has turned itself into a caricature that embraces candidates who openly campaign on platforms of xenophobia, homophobia, racism and misogyny. Take a good look at the current GOP. 45’s win wasn’t a one-off. The millions of people who continue to support 45 and all the sullen resentment he represents. The millions of people who believe un-boundaried second amendment rights are more important than the victims of mass murderers, those who cannot even utter the words domestic terrorists when connected to a white male face. The millions who believe pro-life only matters when fighting for the pre-born. The millions who refuse to see how our country was built and thrived with the work of immigrants, and people of color, and women, and science. The millions who believe international diplomacy is for wimps. The millions who believe regulations from the EPA and the FDA are overreach, but governmental control of my uterus is for my own good. The millions who believe freedom of religion only counts for the right religions. The millions who are so anxious not to regret their votes they are willing to ignore the cyber invasion and manipulations of a foreign government. Willing to blame the victims of a devastating hurricane–and happy to ignore that these same victims are US citizens in US territories. The millions who haven’t said a damned word about CHIP expiring, despite the fact that this directly harms many of their own literal children, let alone that we’re talking about 9 million of our collective children losing their health insurance. The millions who insist on turning a needed national conversation about race and police brutality into nonsense flag waving.

Trickle down economics didn’t work the last time, and was harmful to most. Facing it again, when coupled with weakened unions, erosion of labor laws/protections, loss of protections and regulations for individuals against banks and big business? What is that going to look like? I’m guessing it’s going to look a lot like hunger, disease, and homelessness.

I know many of my friends still have hope, they take heart in knowing there are millions who believe as they do, as I do, in justice, equality, and democracy. That’s true and great, but “we” aren’t the ones in control of this country, and when we were, we didn’t see or understand just how many raised their children on the bitter milk of hatred and ignorance. Facts have been decried fake, journalists declared the enemy, science declared irrelevant, equality outdated, and loyalty to Party more valued than loyalty to country, citizens, humanity, or common sense. America isn’t just divided, we are shattered. For all the memes and giggles about how ineffective this congress has been, they’ve been doing real and significant damage every day that has and will have real and long lasting consequences.

If we haven’t come together for natural disasters (well, natural when viewed through the lens of global climate change), mass slaughter of children and adults, or actual attacks on our country from both foreign entities and enemies within, attacks on voting rights and journalism (both bedrocks of a democratic nation) when, exactly, will this come-together moment happen? What is this country? And what will we be in another year’s time?

For all my blathering, I don’t have the words. Not for what I’m feeling now, and not for what we may look like tomorrow. Maybe my imagination is better than I think, and I’m in fact being overly dramatic. Just in case, someone let me know how to prepare for the zombie apocalypse–the other scenario I’ve never been able to imagine.

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These are my words, all content-- posts and photos-- is mine unless specifically credited. They may not pay the bills, but they're mine--don't liberate them. Links to Mrs Fringe (homepage, specific pages, or posts) are welcome. In other words, no license is given for anyone to reproduce or use words/images from Mrs Fringe without explicit, written consent.